In today's businesses, meetings often must pull together a number of people from multiple national or even international locations. The choice of venue often depends on which people plan to attend in person and which people plan to attend virtually (i.e., by teleconference, video conference, web conference, etc.). Also, a variety of resources and tools may be needed according to the means, as mentioned above, for virtual attendance, and the meeting facilities may be of any of various sizes. Also, if people have to travel, the company may attempt to optimize travel and associated costs. It may be that if people from three different facilities have to travel, the optimal cost may not be to realized by the least amount of travel, because of such variables as special airfare promotions that permit bringing a larger or more distant group of people to a site at less expense than a smaller or less distant group. Additionally, considering work time lost, a larger group may have a lower “work time value” and it may therefore optimize travel costs to require this group to travel.
It is clear that current meeting planner tools, such as those provided by Microsoft Outlook™, Lotus Notes™, and other similar applications, are inadequate to take into consideration all these issues when planning a meeting. They may allow the user, in a very limited way, to add resources, such as a conference room, or even in some cases, an electronic conference bridge. However, selecting the room, the bridge, the location, and all the other meeting arrangements is up to the person entering the meeting in the planning tool. So if a company has, for example, three sites, the person organizing the meeting usually chooses the meeting venue and geographic location of the meeting.
What is clearly needed is a meeting planning tool that contains information about as many different aspects of a meeting as desired, including the cost of the meeting, both in direct expenses and indirect costs to the enterprise or organization, thus allowing a meeting planner to optimize the overall cost of the meeting to the lowest point in a total-cost-of-ownership approach to planning.